The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-06-19
FEMALE COLLEGES.
Mount Holyoke, and a Few Other Insti-
tutions of Learning for Women.

buttons OF Learning Tor women.
New YORK, June 1S.-It is not so many
years that woman has had any legal right
to an education in America. / was talking
no long time ago with a round little white
! haired grandmother, whose dim eye bright
ened as She recalled the time when as ha-
rum-Scarum girl in the days when the CEN
fury was young she climbed upon the win
dow ledge of the ''townhousen in old Ply
mouth, Mass, to hear the village fathers
| discuss the momentous question whether
| girls should be admitted to the public
school. The old farmer who led the opposi-
/ ton didn't want any woman looking over
! his shoulder when he wrote letter, and tell
| ing him when he spelled a word wrong. In
! tins particular case compromise was eff
| fected, by which the girls of Plymouth were
allowed to take what empty seats there
might be in the schoolhouse during the
months from April to October, when the
| boys were called out to work on the farms.
Other communities less tolerant of the ar
| pirations of the weaker sex gave them an
hour or two after o'clock in the afternoon
when the boys were through for the day, or
permitted the pinafored misses to make
what progress they could sitting at their
brothers desk and coming their books
while the more favored sex was ENJOYING its
incoming" In Boston, which from the ear
lest days has prided itself on its public
schools, in 1884 girls were admitted to the
writing" class only, reciting by themselves
one hour each day In reading, spelling and
writing In 1883, after bitter discussion
girls were admitted to the boys classes in
| the reading schools during the summer
months, the old prohibition continuing
in force throughout the main session.
| when the more capable teachers were EN-
ployed, i'll the winter In 1926 Boston tried
| the experiment of a girls high school
asaln Il,
with 100 pupils, was deluged with such a
| flood of applications for admission from
| mentally starved women as well as girls that
in 1923 the committee, under the lead of
Josiah Quincy, recommended its abolition,
urging the most novel reason ever given for
dlScontinuance of any enterprise, that dur
ing the eighteen months the school had been
in operation not one pupil had voluntarily
quilted it, and 400 candidate; were known
to be studying for the next examination.
The school was given up, and it was nearly
quarter of a century before the project
was revived. Such were the beginnings
| comparatively short time ago of the public
education of women in this country. There
were mothers and big brothers, and now
| and then gOverneSs, of course. to point out
| round o and curly S in the good old col
ony times" but the spelling book was not Of
much consequence compared with the sam
! pier
| All this makes it little easier to under
| stand the curious excitement that ran round
the quiet country circles of New England
| Just fifty years ago when Mount Holyoke
| Female Seminary in South Hadley was
opened. Mary Lyon, its founder, was a
woman who in another country and with
another creed might have been canonized.
| With self sacrifice, a devotion and an alb
sorbing zeal that have marked the enthu-
siast in all ages and have never failed to
| move the world, she made the cause of the
education of women her cause, and it was
| her untiring work of years that compelled
success in the face of obstacles not now to
be appreciated or imagined. Buffalo robes
tucked about her, drawn by a stout little
horse and sustained by her own brave heart,
she drove when the snow drifts were deep up
and down among the bleak hills of New
! England, talking with the farmers and
making friends out of enemies in the villages,
meeting and combating everywhere the
prejudice against ''book learning" for girls,
until at last she had in her hands funds
enough to warrant the opening of the school
| which next week celebrates its semi-centen-
NAL, looking back and with justice to the
day of its beginning, as marking date and
an occasion of no small Importance in the
| history of American educational work
All this was only fifty years ago, and yet
so different were peoples ideas then-that
the experiment attracted the utmost interest
and curiosity. 1t was true that a new era
for women was manifestly under way. The
first State appropriation ever made for the
| better education of girls had been scored to
the credit of New York, which had en-
| dowed the Albany Female Academy with
the muniicent sum of 81 ,000in 1921. twas
true that Oberlin invited students of both
sexes with equal cordiality when it opened
| its doors in 1884. But Vassar was nearly a
quarter of a century off, and in all New
England the Mount Holyoke experiment
was unique. SO prevalent was the idea of
the low capacity OF women, so deep rooted
the notion that they could neither in
struct nor be instructed, that in some ways
Mary Lyon herself dared not OPP
pose the current. In the privacy
| of the everyday schoolroom routine,
Latin grammar might be put into girlish
| hands and woman teacher might listen
while BlenSa was declined. But on the days
of the annual examination when distin-
| guiShed visitors on their way from Harvard
commencement dropped in and looked
around with curious eyes, could any woman
| born marshal the forces of her own class
then? Mary Lyon never tried it. And when
! some years after the school opened new
teacher, holder than her predecessors, did
| attempt the hazardous experiment and
everything went well, and neither the girls
| nor their teacher broke down before the
battery of eyes with Latin knowledge shin
ming out of them of the formidable other
sex, tense was the anxiety in the whole
corps of instructors and great the wonder
ment among the visitors--less than fifty
years ago.
Mount Holyoke Seminary is now a -four
ishing school larger and more prosperous no
doubt than Mary Lyon saw it prefigured in
her dreams. 1t has a large force of instruc-
tors, and good advantages for education,
which the alumn9 propose TO supplement at
the jubilee celebration by gift of $50, 900
endowing the Principals chair now ably
filed by Miss Elizabeth Blanchard. 1t has
3l5 pupils, representing twenty-four States
and Territories of this land and one each
from Bulgaria, India, Turkey and the
| Hawaiian islands. Its graduates are liter
ally scattered over the globe as teachers and
missionaries-in which field its alunnn have
always been especially prominent-business
women, wives and mothers. And next
week they propose to gather again, hundreds
of them, for anniversary exercises and
reunion that will fill the hours from Tues
day evening, June 81, to Thursday evening
with "reminiscences of the past and hope for
the future of women.
1t is after all the most gratifying thing
! about the anniversary of Mount Holyoke
that the school is no longer unique; that in
spite of its growth and prosperity it is now
~